The pathetic Russian government and its centuries-old disregard for human
life continues.

Who but Russia solves a hostage crisis by methodically setting itself
up as the grim reaper and mass-executing its own citizens - and for what
end but to save pride and to show who's boss?

As it was under communism, so it is under fascist-styled democracy: In
Russia, human life means little. Besides 50 Chechen rebels dead (shot
in the head, execution style, after the fact), 117 Russian innocents perished,
68 were unaccounted for and another 150-plus found themselves in critical
condition, with 646 hospitalized in all.

Let's not trivialize this. The terrorists threatened to kill a bunch
of folks if their demands weren't met, but it was the Russians who could
have, like any other civilized government, compromised and then taken
care of business after the fact, but who chose instead to do the killing
themselves through the release of an unmentionable gas, "a special
substance," they called it, which was fed through the ventilation
system, Auschwitz-style.

Now the U.S. has convinced Russia to call it an opiate - just as we convinced
Russia to call its shoot-down of an airliner with 64 Israelis on board
last year an accident when, again, they had no explanation.

Yet there were some other unmentionables going on at the theater - perhaps
they were accidents too - what some doctors and members of Parliament
have denounced as a "strangely inadequate" medical response.
The gas assault had been planned for over 24 hours - but, mysteriously,
there weren't enough ambulances, enough medical crews, enough beds, and
enough antidotes on hand (the soldiers had access, but the civilians did
not).

There are so many unanswered questions, and yet nobody seems to want
to ask them. Where are the U.N. human rights activists complaining about
collateral damage? One possible answer is that this was less about a desperate
attempt to save lives and more about power politics, double games and
over-the-top pride, and the pro-thug U.N. knows it.

"We found ourselves having to choose between a horrible tragedy,
in which all the hostages would die, and a horrible disgrace [in which
Putin would have to give in to the rebels]," said Moscow Mayor Yury
Luzhkov.

"The special forces' operation allowed us to prevent the disgrace
and avoid the horrible tragedy," he said.

An interesting perspective. The body count and the horrible way so many
died was, somehow, not disgraceful and not horrible.

Putin

Prideful Putin, for his part, apologized to the victims' families, but
then politicized the event, lumping the people of Chechnya into one nasty
group of animals who are "strong and dangerous, inhuman and cruel.
... They have no future," he said.

Terrorists are strong and dangerous, inhuman and cruel, but is every
Chechen this way as well?

"The Russian state-run media have depicted the Chechen nation as
thugs and bandits responsible for organized crime and street violence
in Russia. Russian 'journalist' Yuri Mogutin wrote in the journal Novy
Vzglyad (A New Glance) of the Chechen nation 'that it had given the
world absolutely nothing except international terrorism and drugs business'
and he remarked also 'that any Russian feels towards the Chechens a zoological,
genetic, animal hatred.'

"Russian government propaganda [following the best traditions of
Soviet indoctrination and employing the same people] was and is trying
to portray all Chechens as criminals and fanatics. Chechens are portrayed
possessing special 'national' characteristics: 'brutality, sadism, fanaticism
and fascism.' Chechens are even accused of 'making Russians drunk by giving
them vodka.'"

Putin's own hatred for these people knows no bounds. Addressing his troops
in Chechnya earlier, he noted: "We'll find dark-skinned terrorists
even in a lavatory and end them there."

Some, on the other hand, believe the "strong and dangerous, inhuman
and cruel" and the "brute, sadist, fanatic, fascist" labels
are, in fact, correct, but point to the wrong bad guys. Boris Kagarlitsky,
writing in the Moscow Times just prior to the Russian-ordered massacre,
asked these questions:

"How many people in Chechnya have disappeared without a trace in
the past three years? How many cities and villages have been destroyed?
How many people have been forced to abandon their homes because life was
made unbearable for them? It is the federal army that over the three years:
abducted and killed Chechens; systematically pillaged and destroyed peaceful
villages; has been terrorizing innocent people. And it is they who bear
most of the responsibility for what has now happened. If you are looking
for terrorists, you could do worse than to start the search in the Kremlin."

He remembers that little incident of the bombs going off in Moscow apartments,
killing 300. It's what brought Putin to power, what created justification
for the latest offensive against Chechnya, what brought about a swift
decline in human rights in Russia, and yet what has been described by
so many analysts inside and outside Russia as an inside job, the work
of Putin's KGB (now FSB).

And with that kind of dirty work in mind, it's just not adequate analysis
to admit that real-life Islamic terrorists caused this whole incident,
without giving consideration to the "double game" communists
and "ex"-communists are accused of playing by certain Russian
insiders and experts.

Forbes senior editor and historian Paul Klebnikov noted in his book Godfather
of the Kremlin that the Yeltsin regime was responsible for the rise
of terrorism in Chechnya, "supporting the extremists financially
and politically, consequently sowing the seeds of conflict [that caused
the first Chechnyan War], and which deliberately undermined the [Chechen]
moderates."

"To make the case clearly," adds Russian analyst J.R. Nyquist,
"the Kremlin financed the Wahhabi extremists [i.e., commanders Basayev
and Khattab] who invaded Dagestan in August 1999 and triggered the Second
Chechen War."

Boris Kagarlitsky in a Jan. 24, 2000, article in Novaya Gazeta
(quoted by Nyquist), says that among other things, it's all about politics:
"Yeltsin's successor had to be anointed. The Russian people had to
be rallied behind their new leader. In addition, the Russian General Staff
had a special operation in mind, code-named 'Anti-Terror.' In order to
execute this operation [which pitted the Russian government against 5,000
bin Laden terrorists based in Chechnya] a spectacular series of outrages
had to be organized."

What we possibly have, then, is the exploitation of terrorism to put
a man in power, to undermine a legitimate freedom movement in Chechnya,
and perhaps one thing more: allowing weapons of mass destruction to slip
into the hands of those Russian government-sponsored terrorists to use,
not against Russia, but against the United States and perhaps Israel.

It's not impossible - and when the head of your government is the former
head of the KGB, it is, in fact, quite probable. Which compels this reviewer
to ask whether or not 177 dead in a theater in Moscow was but one more
in the "spectacular series of outrages"?

Kagarlisky asks similarly: "How in the world did the terrorists
pull off such a large-scale operation in the center of the capital without
the support of influential individuals? This is something that comes to
mind to anyone who knows about the constant problems from the police experienced
in Moscow by people 'of Caucasian extraction.'"